How to Rank a Website Locally: Local SEO Guide

If you’re a business owner who is striving to grow your brand, it’s always necessary to keep up with the times. And right now, the keyword is “local SEO.” Local SEO involves optimizing your website, and online presence in order to rank better in local search results. This is a crucial move for both local business, and international organizations.

How to Get Started

Before you even start strategizing for local SEO, you first need to understand the factors that play a role in determining your local ranking. And according to research published by Moz, the following are some of the major ranking factors in local search:

Link signals – Google takes a look at the quality, and quantity of sites linking to you before considering your Google ranking. This is somewhat like having reputable websites vouch for you. If a lot of high-authority sites are linking to you, Google is going to assume that your website is to be trusted. In case of local search, Google will take a look at the local links, which means you’ll need to get more backlinks from reputable local websites and publications.

GMB signals – In local search results, Google places a huge importance on its Google My Business listings. This means they will use your information on your GMB profile in order to determine whether your business is relevant to a user’s search query. They will prioritize details like proximity to the searcher’s location, relevance of business category, and relevance of city and state.

Review signals – Google will also take user-generated information into account before ranking you in local search result. This includes reviews on your GMB page, and on third-party sites. And it will take a look at both quantity, and quality of reviews to determine your local search ranking. Try encouraging happy customers to leave reviews about your business so you can gain plenty of positive reviews.

Social signals – Your social media presence is another factor that could determine your local search ranking. If you have a massive social media following, and are able to engage your followers effectively, it’s going to improve your chances of boosting your local ranking. Try working towards gaining more followers through intriguing, and engaging content on social media.

Keywords – It’s also important to make sure that your website, GMB page, and social media content is optimized with location specific keywords combined with your target keywords for your business or organization. That includes your meta content, URLs, image alt tags, etc.

These are just some of the basics involved in improving your local search ranking. You can find plenty more tips and ideas to help you in your local SEO efforts by checking out the local SEO infographic below.

Local SEO Inforgraphic

SEOBreeze Local SEO Plugin is a very helpful plugin to help you rank your business locally. It helps you attract customers who use location keyword (like “ Restaurants in London”) in their searches.

If you have any questions or thoughts on this topic, please comment below.

Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant that specializes in influencer marketing, product launches, sales funnels, targeted traffic and website conversions. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.